(or whatever it was) for a certain neat waistcoat and buttons a few
days ago. Now, if I had stayed at Badger's I should have been
obliged to spend twelve pounds at a blow for some heart-breaking
lecture-fees. So I make four pounds--in a lump--by the
transaction!"
It was a question much discussed between him and my guardian what
arrangements should be made for his living in London while he
experimented on the law, for we had long since gone back to Bleak
House, and it was too far off to admit of his coming there oftener
than once a week. My guardian told me that if Richard were to
settle down at Mr. Kenge's he would take some apartments or
chambers where we too could occasionally stay for a few days at a
time; "but, little woman," he added, rubbing his head very
significantly, "he hasn't settled down there yet!" The discussions
ended in our hiring for him, by the month, a neat little furnished
lodging in a quiet old house near Queen Square. He immediately
began to spend all the money he had in buying the oddest little
ornaments and luxuries for this lodging; and so often as Ada and I
dissuaded him from making any purchase that he had in contemplation
which was particularly unnecessary and expensive, he took credit
for what it would have cost and made out that to spend anything
less on something else was to save the difference.
While these affairs were in abeyance, our visit to Mr. Boythorn's
was postponed. At length, Richard having taken possession of his
lodging, there was nothing to prevent our departure. He could have
gone with us at that time of the year very well, but he was in the
full novelty of his new position and was making most energetic
attempts to unravel the mysteries of the fatal suit. Consequently
we went without him, and my darling was delighted to praise him for
being so busy.
We made a pleasant journey down into Lincolnshire by the coach and
had an entertaining companion in Mr. Skimpole. His furniture had
been all cleared off, it appeared, by the person who took
possession of it on his blue-eyed daughter's birthday, but he
seemed quite relieved to think that it was gone. Chairs and table,
he said, were wearisome objects; they were monotonous ideas, they
had no variety of expression, they looked you out of countenance,
and you looked them out of countenance. How pleasant, then, to be
bound to no particular chairs and tables, but to sport like a
butterfly among all the furniture on hire, and to flit from
rosewood to mahogany, and from mahogany to walnut, and from this
shape to that, as the humour took one!
"The oddity of the thing is," said Mr. Skimpole with a quickened
sense of the ludicrous, "that my chairs and tables were not paid
for, and yet my landlord walks off with them as composedly as
possible. Now, that seems droll! There is something grotesque in
it. The chair and table merchant never engaged to pay my landlord
my rent. Why should my landlord quarrel with HIM? If I have a
pimple on my nose which is disagreeable to my landlord's peculiar
ideas of beauty, my landlord has no business to scratch my chair
and table merchant's nose, which has no pimple on it. His
reasoning seems defective!"
"Well," said my guardian good-humouredly, "it's pretty clear that
whoever became security for those chairs and tables will have to
pay for them."
"Exactly!" returned Mr. Skimpole. "That's the crowning point of
unreason in the business! I said to my landlord, 'My good man, you
are not aware that my excellent friend Jarndyce will have to pay
for those things that you are sweeping off in that indelicate
manner. Have you no consideration for HIS property?' He hadn't the
least."
"And refused all proposals," said my guardian.
"Refused all proposals," returned Mr. Skimpole. "I made him
business proposals. I had him into my room. I said, 'You are a
man of business, I believe?' He replied, 'I am,' 'Very well,'
said I, 'now let us be business-like. Here is an inkstand, here
are pens and paper, here are wafers. What do you want? I have
occupied your house for a considerable period, I believe to our
mutual satisfaction until this unpleasant misunderstanding arose;
let us be at once friendly and business-like. What do you want?'
In reply to this, he made use of the figurative expression--which
has something Eastern about it--that he had never seen the colour
of my money. 'My amiable friend,' said I, 'I never have any money.
I never know anything about money.' 'Well, sir,' said he, 'what do
you offer if I give you time?' 'My good fellow,' said I, 'I have
no idea of time; but you say you are a man of business, and
whatever you can suggest to be done in a business-like way with
pen, and ink, and paper--and wafers--I am ready to do. Don't pay
yourself at another man's expense (which is foolish), but be
business-like!' However, he wouldn't be, and there was an end of
it."
If these were some of the inconveniences of Mr. Skimpole's
childhood, it assuredly possessed its advantages too. On the
journey he had a very good appetite for such refreshment as came in
our way (including a basket of choice hothouse peaches), but never
thought of paying for anything. So when the coachman came round
for his fee, he pleasantly asked him what he considered a very good
fee indeed, now--a liberal one--and on his replying half a crown
for a single passenger, said it was little enough too, all things
considered, and left Mr. Jarndyce to give it him.
It was delightful weather. The green corn waved so beautifully,
the larks sang so joyfully, the hedges were so full of wild
flowers, the trees were so thickly out in leaf, the bean-fields,
with a light wind blowing over them, filled the air with such a
delicious fragrance! Late in the afternoon we came to the market-
town where we were to alight from the coach--a dull little town
with a church-spire, and a marketplace, and a market-cross, and one
intensely sunny street, and a pond with an old horse cooling his
legs in it, and a very few men sleepily lying and standing about in
narrow little bits of shade. After the rustling of the leaves and
the waving of the corn all along the road, it looked as still, as
hot, as motionless a little town as England could produce.
At the inn we found Mr. Boythorn on horseback, waiting with an open
carriage to take us to his house, which was a few miles off. He
was overjoyed to see us and dismounted with great alacrity.
"By heaven!" said he after giving us a courteous greeting. This a
most infamous coach. It is the most flagrant example of an
abominable public vehicle that ever encumbered the face of the
earth. It is twenty-five minutes after its time this afternoon.
The coachman ought to be put to death!"
"IS he after his time?" said Mr. Skimpole, to whom he happened to
address himself. "You know my infirmity."
"Twenty-five minutes! Twenty-six minutes!" replied Mr. Boythorn,
referring to his watch. "With two ladies in the coach, this
scoundrel has deliberately delayed his arrival six and twenty
minutes. Deliberately! It is impossible that it can be
accidental! But his father--and his uncle--were the most
profligate coachmen that ever sat upon a box."
While he said this in tones of the greatest indignation, he handed
us into the little phaeton with the utmost gentleness and was all
smiles and pleasure.
"I am sorry, ladies," he said, standing bare-headed at the
carriage-door when all was ready, "that I am obliged to conduct you
nearly two miles out of the way. But our direct road lies through
Sir Leicester Dedlock's park, and in that fellow's property I have
sworn never to set foot of mine, or horse's foot of mine, pending
the present relations between us, while I breathe the breath of
life!" And here, catching my guardian's eye, he broke into one of
his tremendous laughs, which seemed to shake even the motionless
little market-town.
"Are the Dedlocks down here, Lawrence?" said my guardian as we
drove along and Mr. Boythorn trotted on the green turf by the
roadside.
"Sir Arrogant Numskull is here," replied Mr. Boythorn. "Ha ha ha!
Sir Arrogant is here, and I am glad to say, has been laid by the
heels here. My Lady," in naming whom he always made a courtly
gesture as if particularly to exclude her from any part in the
quarrel, "is expected, I believe, daily. I am not in the least
surprised that she postpones her appearance as long as possible.
Whatever can have induced that transcendent woman to marry that
effigy and figure-head of a baronet is one of the most impenetrable
mysteries that ever baffled human inquiry. Ha ha ha ha!"
"I suppose," said my guardian, laughing, "WE may set foot in the
park while we are here? The prohibition does not extend to us,
does it?"
"I can lay no prohibition on my guests," he said, bending his head
to Ada and me with the smiling politeness which sat so gracefully
upon him, "except in the matter of their departure. I am only
sorry that I cannot have the happiness of being their escort about
Chesney Wold, which is a very fine place! But by the light of this
summer day, Jarndyce, if you call upon the owner while you stay
with me, you are likely to have but a cool reception. He carries
himself like an eight-day clock at all times, like one of a race of
eight-day clocks in gorgeous cases that never go and never went--Ha
ha ha!--but he will have some extra stiffness, I can promise you,
for the friends of his friend and neighbour Boythorn!"
"I shall not put him to the proof," said my guardian. "He is as
indifferent to the honour of knowing me, I dare say, as I am to the
honour of knowing him. The air of the grounds and perhaps such a
view of the house as any other sightseer might get are quite enough
for me."
"Well!" said Mr. Boythorn. "I am glad of it on the whole. It's in
better keeping. I am looked upon about here as a second Ajax
defying the lightning. Ha ha ha ha! When I go into our little
church on a Sunday, a considerable part of the inconsiderable
congregation expect to see me drop, scorched and withered, on the
pavement under the Dedlock displeasure. Ha ha ha ha! I have no
doubt he is surprised that I don't. For he is, by heaven, the most
self-satisfied, and the shallowest, and the most coxcombical and
utterly brainless ass!"
Our coming to the ridge of a hill we had been ascending enabled our
friend to point out Chesney Wold itself to us and diverted his
attention from its master.
It was a picturesque old house in a fine park richly wooded. Among
the trees and not far from the residence he pointed out the spire
of the little church of which he had spoken. Oh, the solemn woods
over which the light and shadow travelled swiftly, as if heavenly
wings were sweeping on benignant errands through the summer air;
the smooth green slopes, the glittering water, the garden where the
flowers were so symmetrically arranged in clusters of the richest
colours, how beautiful they looked! The house, with gable and
chimney, and tower, and turret, and dark doorway, and broad
terrace-walk, twining among the balustrades of which, and lying
heaped upon the vases, there was one great flush of roses, seemed
scarcely real in its light solidity and in the serene and peaceful
hush that rested on all around it. To Ada and to me, that above
all appeared the pervading influence. On everything, house,
garden, terrace, green slopes, water, old oaks, fern, moss, woods
again, and far away across the openings in the prospect to the
distance lying wide before us with a purple bloom upon it, there
seemed to be such undisturbed repose.
When we came into the little village and passed a small inn with
the sign of the Dedlock Arms swinging over the road in front, Mr.
Boythorn interchanged greetings with a young gentleman sitting on a
bench outside the inn-door who had some fishing-tackle lying beside
him.
"That's the housekeeper's grandson, Mr. Rouncewell by name," said,
he, "and he is in love with a pretty girl up at the house. Lady
Dedlock has taken a fancy to the pretty girl and is going to keep
her about her own fair person--an honour which my young friend
himself does not at all appreciate. However, he can't marry just
yet, even if his Rosebud were willing; so he is fain to make the
best of it. In the meanwhile, he comes here pretty often for a day
or two at a time to--fish. Ha ha ha ha!"
"Are he and the pretty girl engaged, Mr. Boythorn?" asked Ada.
"Why, my dear Miss Clare," he returned, "I think they may perhaps
understand each other; but you will see them soon, I dare say, and
I must learn from you on such a point--not you from me."
Ada blushed, and Mr. Boythorn, trotting forward on his comely grey
horse, dismounted at his own door and stood ready with extended arm
and uncovered head to welcome us when we arrived.
He lived in a pretty house, formerly the parsonage house, with a
lawn in front, a bright flower-garden at the side, and a well-
stocked orchard and kitchen-garden in the rear, enclosed with a
venerable wall that had of itself a ripened ruddy look. But,
indeed, everything about the place wore an aspect of maturity and
abundance. The old lime-tree walk was like green cloisters, the
very shadows of the cherry-trees and apple-trees were heavy with
fruit, the gooseberry-bushes were so laden that their branches
arched and rested on the earth, the strawberries and raspberries
grew in like profusion, and the peaches basked by the hundred on
the wall. Tumbled about among the spread nets and the glass frames
sparkling and winking in the sun there were such heaps of drooping
pods, and marrows, and cucumbers, that every foot of ground
appeared a vegetable treasury, while the smell of sweet herbs and
all kinds of wholesome growth (to say nothing of the neighbouring
meadows where the hay was carrying) made the whole air a great
nosegay. Such stillness and composure reigned within the orderly
precincts of the old red wall that even the feathers hung in
garlands to scare the birds hardly stirred; and the wall had such a
ripening influence that where, here and there high up, a disused
nail and scrap of list still clung to it, it was easy to fancy that
they had mellowed with the changing seasons and that they had
rusted and decayed according to the common fate.
The house, though a little disorderly in comparison with the
garden, was a real old house with settles in the chimney of the
brick-floored kitchen and great beams across the ceilings. On one
side of it was the terrible piece of ground in dispute, where Mr.
Boythorn maintained a sentry in a smock-frock day and night, whose
duty was supposed to be, in cases of aggression, immediately to
ring a large bell hung up there for the purpose, to unchain a great
bull-dog established in a kennel as his ally, and generally to deal
destruction on the enemy. Not content with these precautions, Mr.
Boythorn had himself composed and posted there, on painted boards
to which his name was attached in large letters, the following
solemn warnings: "Beware of the bull-dog. He is most ferocious.
Lawrence Boythorn." "The blunderbus is loaded with slugs.
Lawrence Boythorn." "Man-traps and spring-guns are set here at all
times of the day and night. Lawrence Boythorn." "Take notice.
That any person or persons audaciously presuming to trespass on
this property will be punished with the utmost severity of private
chastisement and prosecuted with the utmost rigour of the law.
Lawrence Boythorn." These he showed us from the drawing-room
window, while his bird was hopping about his head, and he laughed,
"Ha ha ha ha! Ha ha ha ha!" to that extent as he pointed them out
that I really thought he would have hurt himself.
"But this is taking a good deal of trouble," said Mr. Skimpole in
his light way, "when you are not in earnest after all."
"Not in earnest!" returned Mr. Boythorn with unspeakable warmth.
"Not in earnest! If I could have hoped to train him, I would have
bought a lion instead of that dog and would have turned him loose
upon the first intolerable robber who should dare to make an
encroachment on my rights. Let Sir Leicester Dedlock consent to
come out and decide this question by single combat, and I will meet
him with any weapon known to mankind in any age or country. I am
that much in earnest. Not more!"
We arrived at his house on a Saturday. On the Sunday morning we
all set forth to walk to the little church in the park. Entering
the park, almost immediately by the disputed ground, we pursued a
pleasant footpath winding among the verdant turf and the beautiful
trees until it brought us to the church-porch.
The congregation was extremely small and quite a rustic one with
the exception of a large muster of servants from the house, some of
whom were already in their seats, while others were yet dropping
in. There were some stately footmen, and there was a perfect
picture of an old coachman, who looked as if he were the official
representative of all the pomps and vanities that had ever been put
into his coach. There was a very pretty show of young women, and
above them, the handsome old face and fine responsible portly
figure of the housekeeper towered pre-eminent. The pretty girl of
whom Mr. Boythorn had told us was close by her. She was so very
pretty that I might have known her by her beauty even if I had not
seen how blushingly conscious she was of the eyes of the young
fisherman, whom I discovered not far off. One face, and not an
agreeable one, though it was handsome, seemed maliciously watchful
of this pretty girl, and indeed of every one and everything there.
It was a Frenchwoman's.
As the bell was yet ringing and the great people were not yet come,
I had leisure to glance over the church, which smelt as earthy as a
grave, and to think what a shady, ancient, solemn little church it
was. The windows, heavily shaded by trees, admitted a subdued
light that made the faces around me pale, and darkened the old
brasses in the pavement and the time and damp-worn monuments, and
rendered the sunshine in the little porch, where a monotonous
ringer was working at the bell, inestimably bright. But a stir in
that direction, a gathering of reverential awe in the rustic faces,
and a blandly ferocious assumption on the part of Mr. Boythorn of
being resolutely unconscious of somebody's existence forewarned me
that the great people were come and that the service was going to
begin.
"'Enter not into judgment with thy servant, O Lord, for in thy
sight--'"
Shall I ever forget the rapid beating at my heart, occasioned by
the look I met as I stood up! Shall I ever forget the manner in
which those handsome proud eyes seemed to spring out of their
languor and to hold mine! It was only a moment before I cast mine
down--released again, if I may say so--on my book; but I knew the
beautiful face quite well in that short space of time.
And, very strangely, there was something quickened within me,
associated with the lonely days at my godmother's; yes, away even
to the days when I had stood on tiptoe to dress myself at my little
glass after dressing my doll. And this, although I had never seen
this lady's face before in all my life--I was quite sure of it--
absolutely certain.
It was easy to know that the ceremonious, gouty, grey-haired
gentleman, the only other occupant of the great pew, was Sir
Leicester Dedlock, and that the lady was Lady Dedlock. But why her
face should be, in a confused way, like a broken glass to me, in
which I saw scraps of old remembrances, and why I should be so
fluttered and troubled (for I was still) by having casually met her
eyes, I could not think.
I felt it to be an unmeaning weakness in me and tried to overcome
it by attending to the words I heard. Then, very strangely, I
seemed to hear them, not in the reader's voice, but in the well-
remembered voice of my godmother. This made me think, did Lady
Dedlock's face accidentally resemble my godmother's? It might be
that it did, a little; but the expression was so different, and the
stern decision which had worn into my godmother's face, like
weather into rocks, was so completely wanting in the face before me
that it could not be that resemblance which had struck me. Neither
did I know the loftiness and haughtiness of Lady Dedlock's face, at
all, in any one. And yet I--I, little Esther Summerson, the child
who lived a life apart and on whose birthday there was no
rejoicing--seemed to arise before my own eyes, evoked out of the
past by some power in this fashionable lady, whom I not only
entertained no fancy that I had ever seen, but whom I perfectly
well knew I had never seen until that hour.
It made me tremble so to be thrown into this unaccountable
agitation that I was conscious of being distressed even by the
observation of the French maid, though I knew she had been looking
watchfully here, and there, and everywhere, from the moment of her
coming into the church. By degrees, though very slowly, I at last
overcame my strange emotion. After a long time, I looked towards
Lady Dedlock again. It was while they were preparing to sing,
before the sermon. She took no heed of me, and the beating at my
heart was gone. Neither did it revive for more than a few moments
when she once or twice afterwards glanced at Ada or at me through
her glass.
The service being concluded, Sir Leicester gave his arm with much
taste and gallantry to Lady Dedlock--though he was obliged to walk
by the help of a thick stick--and escorted her out of church to the
pony carriage in which they had come. The servants then dispersed,
and so did the congregation, whom Sir Leicester had contemplated
all along (Mr. Skimpole said to Mr. Boythorn's infinite delight) as
if he were a considerable landed proprietor in heaven.
"He believes he is!" said Mr. Boythorn. "He firmly believes it.
So did his father, and his grandfather, and his great-grandfather!"
"Do you know," pursued Mr. Skimpole very unexpectedly to Mr.
Boythorn, "it's agreeable to me to see a man of that sort."
"IS it!" said Mr. Boythorn.
"Say that he wants to patronize me," pursued Mr. Skimpole. "Very
well! I don't object."
"I do," said Mr. Boythorn with great vigour.
"Do you really?" returned Mr. Skimpole in his easy light vein.
"But that's taking trouble, surely. And why should you take
trouble? Here am I, content to receive things childishly as they
fall out, and I never take trouble! I come down here, for
instance, and I find a mighty potentate exacting homage. Very
well! I say 'Mighty potentate, here IS my homage! It's easier to
give it than to withhold it. Here it is. If you have anything of
an agreeable nature to show me, I shall be happy to see it; if you
have anything of an agreeable nature to give me, I shall be happy
to accept it.' Mighty potentate replies in effect, 'This is a
sensible fellow. I find him accord with my digestion and my
bilious system. He doesn't impose upon me the necessity of rolling
myself up like a hedgehog with my points outward. I expand, I
open, I turn my silver lining outward like Milton's cloud, and it's
more agreeable to both of us.' That's my view of such things,
speaking as a child!"
"But suppose you went down somewhere else to-morrow," said Mr.
Boythorn, "where there was the opposite of that fellow--or of this
fellow. How then?"
"How then?" said Mr. Skimpole with an appearance of the utmost
simplicity and candour. "Just the same then! I should say, 'My
esteemed Boythorn'--to make you the personification of our
imaginary friend--'my esteemed Boythorn, you object to the mighty
potentate? Very good. So do I. I take it that my business in the
social system is to be agreeable; I take it that everybody's
business in the social system is to be agreeable. It's a system of
harmony, in short. Therefore if you object, I object. Now,
excellent Boythorn, let us go to dinner!'"
"But excellent Boythorn might say," returned our host, swelling and
growing very red, "I'll be--"
"I understand," said Mr. Skimpole. "Very likely he would."
"--if I WILL go to dinner!" cried Mr. Boythorn in a violent burst
and stopping to strike his stick upon the ground. "And he would
probably add, 'Is there such a thing as principle, Mr. Harold
Skimpole?'"
"To which Harold Skimpole would reply, you know," he returned in
his gayest manner and with his most ingenuous smile, "'Upon my life
I have not the least idea! I don't know what it is you call by
that name, or where it is, or who possesses it. If you possess it
and find it comfortable, I am quite delighted and congratulate you
heartily. But I know nothing about it, I assure you; for I am a
mere child, and I lay no claim to it, and I don't want it!' So,
you see, excellent Boythorn and I would go to dinner after all!"
This was one of many little dialogues between them which I always
expected to end, and which I dare say would have ended under other
circumstances, in some violent explosion on the part of our host.
But he had so high a sense of his hospitable and responsible
position as our entertainer, and my guardian laughed so sincerely
at and with Mr. Skimpole, as a child who blew bubbles and broke
them all day long, that matters never went beyond this point. Mr.
Skimpole, who always seemed quite unconscious of having been on
delicate ground, then betook himself to beginning some sketch in
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